Lots of Loser Energy in the NFC East Today
No doubt it was a good year for the NFC East. Obviously, the Philadelphia Eagles are in preparation for the Super Bowl. The Dallas Cowboys and New York Giants both nabbed wild card berths and won their first postseason games. However, loser energy radiated all across the division’s landscape at the expense of the Eagles on both Wednesday and Thursday. Over two weeks after the Cowboys and Giants were eliminated, one owner showed his foolishness and one defensive back took a wild shot at the Eagles’ head coach. Let’s recap a dumb 24 hours in the NFC East.
Jerry Jones Is A Fool
Dallas Cowboys owner Jerry Jones is no stranger to looking like an absolute fool in front of reporters.
In fact, if his teams were half as good at winning football games as Jones is at drawing attention for ridiculous statements, he’d be regarded as a football mastermind and not a lackluster owner.
On Wednesday, Jones indirectly took aim at the Eagles by lumping Howie Roseman’s roster construction strategy with the Los Angeles Rams’ “f them picks” strategy from a year ago.
“Anybody who thinks I won’t take a chance, has misread the tea leaves. But I do think longer term,” Jones said. “And I’m real hesitant to bet it all for a year. There’s a lot of things that can happen for that year. In essence, we’re seeing a couple of teams that have had some real success putting it all out there and paying for it later, in Philadelphia and Los Angeles.”
Cowboys owner Jerry Jones sharing his thoughts with reporters today at the Senior Bowl on how the Eagles and Rams turned being aggressive in the offseason into Super Bowl berths the last two seasons: pic.twitter.com/CoPanaV3PQ
— Jon Machota (@jonmachota) February 2, 2023
Essentially, Jones is attempting to foreshadow the Eagles falling from grace after their successful season.
He fails to acknowledge that the Eagles capitalized on having a franchise quarterback on a rookie deal, have built and developed their team in the trenches, paid pass catchers instead of burning money by signing an overrated running back to an extension, have multiple first round picks in this season’s draft and have been opportunistic to add big time talents at discounts when things go awry with other teams.
The Rams will end up going seven straight seasons without a first round pick, made their first pick of the 2022 draft in the 3rd round, will have only two picks in the draft’s first 150 picks in 2023, are financially tied to an aging quarterback until at least 2025 and have $255 million dollars in cap allocations to an aging roster in 2024.
Putting the two teams in the same conversation is the signal of two things to me:
- The Cowboys are run by someone who doesn’t quite know how to build a roster.
- Jerry Jones is admitting that he just kind of hopes that the roster he puts together has everything break its way instead of taking the risks necessary to better it.
Basically, Jones does not understand winning. That’s perfectly okay with me.
Julian Love Is Salty
Less than two weeks after the Eagles dismantled the Giants in a game where Eagles’ head coach Nick Sirianni out-coached Giants’ head coach Brian Daboll, New York Giants defensive back Julian Love made his way onto NFL Network’s Good Morning Football.
Love was asked about Sirianni’s antics on the sideline. Which included staring down the camera in celebration during the blowout 38-7 win.
“I don’t like it. I don’t like it at all,” Love responded. “He’s in for a free ride right now. You guys can coach this team.”
#Giants Safety Julian Love says #Eagles coach Nick Sirianni is "In for a free ride right now."
— Dov Kleiman (@NFL_DovKleiman) February 2, 2023
"You guys can coach this team"
Says he doesn't like his antics. pic.twitter.com/2PP4DYX2XP
One can understand why he doesn’t like someone else celebrating his team’s failures.
Especially when his failure directly contributed to making Nick Sirianni look smart in the Eagles’ first drubbing of the Giants this season.
No alligator arms here. DeVonta Smith catches the fade and runs it in for the TD pic.twitter.com/WSBBrOVJXO
— Fitz (@LaurieFitzptrck) December 11, 2022
Through two seasons in Philadelphia, Nick Sirianni is 23-11 in the regular season and has won a conference championship. In fact, Sirianni has as many winning seasons in his first two seasons as Eagles’ head coach as the Giants have in their last decade.
The Eagles are talented, sure, but not at the expense of how impactful their head coach is.
As most things are, this is best summed up by Brandon Graham’s reaction to it:
“A lot of people just mad because of what happened this season and I understand. It definitely carried no weight because coach proved himself each and every day and if you’re not in here, you wouldn’t really know that. It’s just all lip service.”
